Yelps over Phelps are misguided – he's been a dope and nothing more

Michael Phelps listens to the American anthem in Beijing. Photograph: Jerry Lampen/REUTERS

For all of nine hours over the weekend George Obama was the most famous man on earth to be linked with pot. And then Michael Phelps got caught indulging in what he has since described as some ­"regrettable behaviour". The photo in question must be doing more for the News of the World's online circulation than two dozen Search Engine Optimisation seminars and any number of Britney Spears references shoe-horned into opening paragraphs.

Phelps has never looked more human (read that as "stupid") than he does in that photo, and as a consequence he has never seemed a more remarkable athlete. The diamond-encrusted bezel of his watch aside, the photo is a welcome acknowledgment of Phelps's normalcy. The man who has won more gold medals at a single Olympics than any other person in history is actually, we are reminded, just a regular 23-year-old frat boy. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and has his baseball cap on backwards and he's in an apartment that is filled with empty cups and beer bottles and has a laptop linked up to the stereo.

Phelps' feats seem all the more extraordinary when you see just how normal a person he is. Before now, he had seemed superhuman. Everything about the guy, from his gargantuan breakfasts – actually they make a little more sense now – to his size 14 feet made Phelps seem like some kind of freak whose sole purpose on this planet was to provide a shining example to us all through his prowess in the swimming pool. When a man achieves as much success as Phelps has, it becomes impossible for anyone to empathise with him.

But the News of the World's photo shows him up as just another university jock, callow in experience and lusty in his tastes. The photo makes the sacrifice, devotion and effort it took him to win those 16 Olympic medals feel all the more tangible. It was a regular human being who did those things. All the time he was training in the pool, he was dreaming not just of another gold medal but, most likely, of the parties he was missing, the good times he could have been having, the girls he could have been kissing and the highs he could have been enjoying. Michael Phelps has, for the first time in his life, acted his age.

He's not just the messiah, he is also a very naughty boy. Well, fairly naughty. Even with the recent re-reclassification of cannabis in this country to class B status the standard fine for anyone caught in possession is £80. For Phelps the financial penalties will run into millions, as his innumerable sponsors start invoking the "disrepute" clauses in the small print of their contracts and cutting their losses. Phelps can't quibble with that, it's just the flip-side of the deal he made when taking the dollars in the first place.

This story will, supposedly, have huge ramifications for Phelps's reputation. But when two of the last three presidents of the USA have openly admitted to smoking cannabis, it seems bizarre that his shenanigans should provoke such a severe backlash.

Their client having been caught, Phelps's PR people at least had enough sense to eschew the Bill Clinton defence.

"When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and didn't inhale, and never tried it again."

That was Clinton's blundering side-step when confronted with his past misdemeanours, the line that saw him branded as a "disgrace to an entire generation" by Hunter S Thompson. The savvier thing to do these days is to make like Obama and come straight out and confess. "When I was a kid, I inhaled. That was the point." Only last July there was a curious group confessional on the Labour front bench as Jacqui Smith, Andy Burnham, Alistair Darling, Ruth Kelly and Harriet Harman admitted they had smoked the drug as students.

Phelps's PR firm reportedly offered the News of the World Phelps's services as a columnist and a "party-host" in an effort to dissuade it from going public. Dope-smoking has become so common a crime, however, that it's a wonder Phelps's marketing bods don't consider making a little capital out of it. They might, for example, find a whole new midnight market for Phelps's cereal endorsements.

The one company that is cashing in is the manufacturer of the device which Phelps was using when he was snapped. It has already slipped out a press release describing the product as "'The Mercedes Benz of bongs'. The best money can buy. They're thick and heavy, being manufactured out of medical-grade pyrex glass, and made to take the bumps."

In the middle of a recession, it is always boom-time for somebody.

A four-year ban for Phelps is being mooted by some commentators, but that is too draconian. This was a recreational mistake and it was in no way performance-enhancing.

Phelps will not be kept from competing at London 2012, nor should he be. He has been stung while being stupid and he will eventually be wiser, if not richer, for the experience.

There are more than enough reasons to worry about drug abuse in sport to get too hot and bothered about a stoned 23-year-old jock. Even if he is the greatest athlete on the planet.